Happy Women’s History Month?
I was told in numerous e-mails that March was Women’s History Month. Well, March has now bit the dust, and I have yet to see anyone notice it. What did I miss??? Where was the huge parade? Where were the news commentators signing off with “..and a Happy Women’s History Month”? The politicians chiming in? The clever little articles in the daily paper? I have five calendars in my home, and not one of them mentions it. They do mention (along with St. Pat’s, Good Friday and Easter) Purim Good Friday, Australian Labor Day, Maha Shiwaratri (Hindu), Ostra (Pagin/Wiccan), Great Lent (Eastern Orthodox) and Adopt A Rescued Guinea Pig Month. Oh, and two of the five mention International Women’s Day (the 8th, by the way). But evidently no one cared much that March was Women’s History Month. Another feeble nod in our direction.
BUT - we at In The Trenches Productions always give a fig, as EVERY month is Women’s History Month for us…and we celebrate year round. For instance, check out our short “The Forgotten Grave”. It is the story of Sarah Edmonds , who ran away from home and an arranged marriage in Canada at the age of twenty, when the war broke out between the states. She was compelled to take on the disguise of Frank Thompson and signed on as a male nurse. She was soon asked to disguise herself as a black soldier as well as a female refugee in order to spy behind the Confederate lines. As a soldier she fought in the Battle of the Seven Days, The Battle of Antietam and the Battle of Fredericksburg. Later in life, she returned home disguised as a man and her own mother did not recognize her.
“The Forgotten Grave” is carefully crafted with compelling narration, period music and original compositions that provide a dramatic and lyric thread to the story.
There are approximately 400 documented cases of women who took up the guise of a man to fight as a male soldier in the American Civil War, but so far none of their stories, though told in books and letters has ever reached the screen, not even in the Ken Burns epic documentary “The Civil War”. These women (of all races and ages) took up the gun and the guise of a man despite the consequences, social mores and military taboos.
Yes, the world may have chosen to all but ignore Women’s History Month, but In the Trenches Productions shines the spotlight on them every hour of every day!
Judith “Shine on, baby!’ Drake, Blogger for In the Trenches Productions
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